


i see the stars in you

by hupsoonheng



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), M/M, Misunderstandings, Polyamory, Recovery, Safehouses, Soulmates, Trans Male Character, Trans Sam Wilson, Trans Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 18:36:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12371649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hupsoonheng/pseuds/hupsoonheng
Summary: sam has always had the eagle on his back.the constellation aquila is drawn out in birthmarks on sam's back, but to sam, that's all they are. to others—namely, the men he's stuck living with in a safehouse in a forgotten corner of australia—they're a soulmate mark, and one of them just discovered sam's matches his.my very late wip fic for the 2017 swbb!





	i see the stars in you

**Author's Note:**

> lunaaltare is providing art for this fic, but is running even later than me due to nonsense circumstances and the fact that we started our work together late anyway because of her birthday, lmao. it'll be added in later this week when it's finished!

When you were a little boy growing up in Harlem, you had a lot of ideas of how your life would turn out. Sure, you knew the world wanted you to have limited options, but that didn't mean you had to agree. You might be a firefighter, or a veterinarian, or an astronaut. You might live here in New York still, or across the world in China. 

What you never envisioned for yourself was to be stuck in a so-called safe house in Australia, let alone with the former Captain America and Winter Soldier, respectively. In fact, you're pretty sure if you went back in time and showed your child self some footage of the experience, he'd say he'd never want it at all. 

The heat makes everything worse. That's what you keep telling yourself. There's central air in the safe house, but that's because there _has_ to be. It's January in this tiny town on the coast of South Australia, which means if you step outside the sun is waiting to strip your skin off. The beach is a short walk away, but you're not ready to trust the water here yet. American conventional wisdom taught you Australian bodies of water are teeming with wildlife ready to poison, paralyze, or otherwise murder anyone stupid enough to enter. 

Steve does most of the supply runs because he claims the heat doesn't affect him the same way, thanks to Erskine's serum. He's grown a beard out, which surprised you; you really thought Steve hadn't touched a razor since 1939. You guess a super soldier serum wouldn't necessarily inhibit facial hair, though now you've been wondering about how he stays so hairless all over the rest of his body. He dyed his beard and hair darker, too, and affects a Boston accent the second he steps outside the house, even if there's nobody else in sight. Sometimes he uses it inside the house just to make you laugh. 

"It's not forever," Steve says as he's handing you a popsicle right out of the grocery bag, after one such supply run. Popsicles are absolutely supplies. "It's like a vacation." 

"What kind of vacation is that?" you reply with a dark chuckle. But you watch Steve work on his popsicle as he puts away groceries, sucking and never biting because he never got over having sensitive teeth as a kid, and you guess it's not so bad. 

Steve finishes his popsicle first, and puts purple-tinted cold lips right behind your ear to make you shriek. Batting at him makes you drop your popsicle, and you glare at him. 

"You owe me a new popsicle," you say, pointing at the freezer. 

"Popsicles are a limited resource," he says with an arched brow. "I could make it up to you in some other way, if you're up for it." 

"I dunno, I was pretty set on that popsicle." You pretend you don't notice Steve taking slow steps toward you, except to lean back against the counter when he's just inches away from pressing up against you. 

"Well, if you want more popsicles so bad you can go out into 120 degree weather and get them yourself," Steve smirks. "You wanna do that?" 

"Never mind, I'll take the other option," you say, as if it's some great imposition. Steve doesn't waste any time, strong hands lifting you by the backs of your thighs to sit on the counter, and pushing your knees apart to make space for himself. 

The door slams open. "God _dammit_ ," you groan, sliding back down to the linoleum while Steve scrambles to be as much on the opposite end of the room from you as possible. 

"Hey Buck," Steve says with a wave as Bucky enters the kitchen, and you want to put your face in your hand from how red he is. 

"When did you go outside?" you want to know, skipping over the niceties. 

"I wanted ice cream." Bucky throws a plastic bag onto the counter, full of cardboard pint containers. 

Steve frowns, and glances out the window. "But you didn't take the truck." 

"It'll freeze back together." Bucky opens the freezer and starts arranging all his ice cream inside. Or cream, you guess, because it's an hour and a half trip to walk to town and back from the house. 

"It's going to be crystalized and nasty," you remark. 

Bucky doesn't look away from his task. "I don't care. Then no one else will eat it." 

Well, it's solid logic, you guess. 

He finishes putting away his would-be ice cream, and looks you up and down. He opens his mouth like he wants to say something—so you beat him to it. 

"Don't give me that look again," you warn, pushing off the edge of the counter to head for the hall to the rest of the house. "Not if you want to keep those eyes in your head." 

"Did you just threaten the world's deadliest assassin?" Bucky screws up his face like he's actually confused. 

"World's deadliest nothing! That was the old you!" you say as you leave the room. And then, just in case Bucky didn't get it, you pop your head back in. "I'm not sweating you, clear?" 

"I don't know what that means," Bucky says, voice flat in honesty. 

"Aaaaghh!" You throw your hands up and head for your room. Bucky ruins _everything_. 

Shutting your door also shuts out the sound of Steve and Bucky talking. Your room is spare, given that most of your belongings are in your mama's brownstone's basement back in New York, but there's enough here to make it a refuge from Bucky's attempts at social interaction. That's a generous term for it, anyway. 

The house is a two bedroom; not much else was on offer, especially in such a remote location. You got one room. Steve apparently intended to share the second room with Bucky, whether that meant sleeping on the floor or replacing the bed with two twins, or even just keeping to one side of the bed. Bucky, instead, set himself up on the couch on the first night and hasn't slept anywhere else since. Guess he didn't want to share. 

If you didn't have to live with Bucky, time in the safe house really would be like a vacation. Steve keeps the place clean, you like to learn new recipes together with him; you'd have a lot more sex without Bucky around, that's for sure. Maybe even have some kind of conversation about feelings and commitment with Steve. 

But Steve would never put Bucky out, not after all the time he spent trying to find the man. His best friend. So Bucky hangs around like cobwebs. The living room has been taken over by his mess, which is why Steve dragged out stools for the kitchen island, but you miss the feeling of sinking into a couch. He eats by himself on that couch, and sure he does his dishes, but he only eats out of one bowl in the first place that he just washes when he needs to refill it. Otherwise it sits on the coffee table, a crusty eyesore. 

"He's recovering from a lot," Steve said in Bucky's defense, and you get it, you've counseled plenty of vets who fell into depression and even hoarding. You've been there yourself. You just don't remember _inflicting_ yourself on other people the way Bucky does. 

"I wish you and Bucky could get along," Steve sighs later that night, not for the first time. Bucky is still in his living room grotto, working hard on a permanent groove right in the middle of the couch. You and Steve are in bed together, although neither of you are naked; you don't want to have sex while Bucky's awake. Hell, you don't much like to have sex while Bucky's in the house, period, but sometimes you're between a rock and a hard place, in more than one way. 

"Believe me, I want to. But I also want to sit on the damn couch, Steve." You twine your leg around Steve's. The air is on, but Steve doesn't like to set it too cold, so you're both in shorts. Steve puts gentle fingers on the inside of your wrist, lying on his stomach where you're on your back. 

"I know, just... he didn't want to be in the room with me." Steve frowns. "Sometimes I feel like he doesn't want to be around me at all." 

"Oh, come the fuck on, Steve, you know that's not true. If he didn't want to be here, he'd've ghosted already, one. Two, he seemed happy enough to fight by your side, and weren't y'all exchanging anecdotes about girls you ran with back in the day?" 

"I mean—no, you're right." Another sigh. "But he doesn't talk to me, Sam. He doesn't go out of his way to interact with me." 

"You told me to have patience with him because, as you said, he's 'recovering from a lot'. Take your own advice, Steve." 

"You know I never can." Steve gives you that little side-smile that crinkles his forehead, and you swear your heart melts out of existence. You've gotten this far without talking about feelings and commitment, but you don't know how much longer you can hold out. He reaches over, runs an insistent hand over your bare chest. "Bucky might be asleep, you know. I don't hear anything." 

"That doesn't mean anything. He could just be zoning out," you say, but you don't move Steve's hand, not even when his fingers find one of your nipples and roll it gently between two fingertips. 

"We've both been on active duty," Steve says as he pushes himself to his hands and knees. "We know how to be quiet." 

"I mean, you're not wrong," you murmur, right before Steve descends on you with feather kisses down your body. 

Making out with Steve never fails to make you feel good. He loves to be on top of you, the weight of his dense body bearing down to make you really feel it when he undulates against you. He's not an expert kisser, but he's also someone who moans through kisses in a voice higher than you've ever heard him speak with, and it makes up for any shortcomings. 

The other thing about making out with Steve—about doing anything in bed with Steve—is that he doesn't mind that you don't have the conventional definition of a dick, because neither does he. When he grinds on you you can still feel him, though, as if the serum made _everything_ bigger. (Not that you have a basis for comparison.) You feel safe with Steve, knowing he won't see your body as weird, knowing there's none of the same stale questions to answer. It makes your heart ache all the more, when you think about that, that there's no name put to what you and Steve are. 

Steve's hand slips under your shorts, close enough to parting your vulva that your dick pulses, your legs trembling around his hips—

Crashing sounds come from the living room. You try not to scream as you put your hands over your face, and Steve sits back, all the blood from making out draining straight to his embarrassed face. 

"Don't go out there, Steve, don't you _dare_ fucking go out there," you tell the palms of your hands, muffled by them. "If you don't hear screaming, ain't nothing going on that needs your attention." 

"But—" Steve gestures at the door with both arms. 

"Nope! Leave him alone. For all you know that's just what happens when he beats his meat and he's only got one hand to do it. Knocking shit over in the process." 

Steve laughs. "That's where your mind went first?" 

"What do you think?" you snap, indignant hands framing your crotch. You sigh, deep and dramatic, and pat the space next to you. "Let's wait it out, huh?" 

"If you say so." Steve lays himself down next to you on his side, and you roll closer to him, flipping onto your stomach. 

"Got any good childhood stories to reminisce on? Really kill the mood?" you say, grinning over your shoulder. 

Steve doesn't answer, though, trailing fingers over your back. "Your birthmarks," he says, finding each and tracing a line between them. 

"What about them?" you ask, humming as you close your eyes. The lightness of Steve's touch feels nice against your hot skin. 

"Anyone ever tell you they look like a constellation?" 

"A few people," you snort, eyes still closed. "Starting with my father. He said I had the eagle on my back." 

"Aquila," Steve says, agreeing. 

"Well look at you and your book learnin'," you say, grinning into the crook of your elbow. "La di da." 

"When I was a kid," Steve starts, and man, you were only joking about the childhood stories, but here he goes anyway, "my mom told me that if you found someone with a constellation on their skin that matched yours, that was your soulmate." 

"Must suck to have freckles, then," you chuckle. 

"Sam," Steve admonishes. 

"What? It's not like it's true. I heard the same stories when I was a kid. It's bullshit, Steve. A whole lotta hooey, my grandmother would say, God rest her soul." You twist just enough to look him in the face. 

"I think it's nice," Steve says. 

"Yeah? What's on _your_ back?" you ask, and immediately regret it. 

Steve grimaces. "I don't—the serum erased all my birthmarks. Clean slate." 

Well, at least the answer isn't _Oh, you know, something wildly different from what you have._ But it's a little sad, Steve the romantic being robbed of finding his hypothetical soulmate out there in the world. You don't ask what it used to be. 

There's a moment where neither of you say anything. Then Steve says, voice low, "Think he's asleep?" 

"Horndog," you say, and kiss the inside of Steve's wrist. Steve leans down in turn and kisses each of your birthmarks that make the stars of the eagle. 

There's no sex, in the end, but you do fall asleep with your head nestled against Steve's ample chest, dreaming that you and he have made something real together. 

Life in the safe house is dull, if you're honest, even if you appreciate the break from the violence of Avenger—ex-Avenger?—life. Steve reads a lot of books. You read a lot of books. Bucky watches a lot of TV in between reading books that don't look like they came from the safe house or the local bookshop. You and Steve take a long drive to a bigger town nearby and come back with a dragon's hoard of hobby supplies, and Steve teaches himself how to knit while you distract yourself by making model airplanes. Bucky can work the hot glue gun with his one hand and proceeds to hot glue everything to anything, like pages of books together, or a pair of socks you forgot inside your sneakers, or on one occasion, two of your planes. That was the last occasion, because then you ran the hot glue gun over with the truck. 

Comfortable reading or hobby-partaking, though, requires the air conditioning to be functional, and two weeks after your soulmates chat with Steve, the air is on the fritz. It only works a fourth of when it should, meaning that while it's not as hot as it is outside, it's definitely way hotter than it should be. 

"It's got to be," you say, resting your head against the barely-cool counter of the kitchen island, "one hundred degrees in here." 

Steve, being the little shit he is, checks the thermostat. "Only ninety six, big baby." 

You just groan and try to find another cool spot on the counter, since your face warms the tile up so fast. 

"You know what we should do to cool off?" Steve says, planting his fists on his hips. 

"Sex doesn't cool anyone down," you mumble into the counter. 

"Go to the beach!" he crows, loud like he's just pretending he didn't hear you. Bucky looks up from the couch. 

"Oh no. No, no. You're not getting me in those shark-infested waters. Unlike you, I have survival instinct." You lift your head just to make sure your words come out clear. 

"Sam, don't be silly. The water's fine." Steve tugs at your elbow to pull you off the kitchen stool. "Plus you've got two super soldiers with you to make sure you don't die if something does happen." 

"One and a half, you mean," you say, glancing at Bucky, who gives you a flat look that tells you your burn hit home. 

"Sam," Steve chides. 

"You've got exactly one super soldier to make sure you don't die," Bucky says. 

"Bucky!" 

"Don't Bucky me. I'm not the one stirring shit." 

"This time," you fire back. 

"Kids! Kids. No fighting." Steve holds his hands up. "Why don't we all head into town and see what beach gear there is?" 

"Oh, yeah, that won't arouse any suspicion," Bucky grumbles, sinking further down into the couch. 

"I think there's already trunks in the hall closet," you offer, because you'd rather go to the beach with Bucky than pack into a car with him for a long trip (again). 

"So you'll go to the beach with me?" Steve practically chirps. 

"If it means no long trips into town, sure," you say, and Steve doesn't pick up on your sighing, or he's ignoring it. 

Bucky stays on the couch while you and Steve investigate the hall closet. The trunks are nothing to write home about, maybe a little less obnoxiously heterosexual than something you'd pick up in America with lengths that hit mid-thigh rather than the top of the knee, but you're not here to attract attention. Steve measures the trunks against his body, and you do the same; they'll fit. And if they fit Steve, they'll probably fit Bucky, even if he's put on a little more weight since coming to the house. 

"Bucky! Come pick trunks out!" Steve shouts, and to your surprise, Bucky actually gets up to obey. He doesn't actually choose anything, just reaches blindly and grabs the first pair of trunks he touches, but at least he's made something akin to a choice. 

"Don't tell me you don't still get sunburns," you say, standing in the bathroom while Steve smooths pasty sunscreen across your skin with strong hands. The more he touches you the less you feel like going to the beach. 

"No, I definitely burn. Then I shed all my skin overnight like a snake." Steve kisses the back of your hairline after spreading lotion just under it. "That's why it's my turn to get sunscreen." 

"Nasty," you say, even as you both turn around and you put lotion-greasy hands on Steve's back. He wasn't kidding about having no birthmarks left. 

You come out of the bathroom to find Bucky changed into the trunks, which pinch the newly soft flesh around his hips, but also there's an inflatable chocolate donut around his waist, which must have come from wherever he also got the hot pink sunglasses that look too small for his face. 

"That's a look," you say, before you can stop yourself. 

Bucky flicks the donut with his thumb and index finger. "Donut be jealous." His expression doesn't change. 

"Wow. Okay. Steve, you ready?" You bite off the word _baby_ from the end of that sentence, not ready for the trouble it'll cause. 

"Yeah, Sam." Steve doles out towels to both of you, a giant beach umbrella carried over his shoulder like it weighs nothing. "Come on." And he leads the way out of the house. 

Being so far from town, the beach is a five minute walk from the house, and that should be an easy trek. But it's well over a hundred degrees, and those five minutes seem like five hours meant to melt your measly human skin right off. Steve calls out encouragement from the front of your little conga line, and you want to punch him, just a little bit. 

When you find a decent spot on the sand, Steve plants the beach umbrella, you unfurl your towel, and Bucky drops his towel in a heap to make a beeline for the water. He only just remembers to step out of his flip flops, and he wades through the gentle morning surf like a man headed for the center of the Pacific. 

"Is that supposed to be fun?" you ask, wrinkling your nose while Steve opens the umbrella. 

"He's just going in the water, Sam. You could go in with him, show him how it's done if you think he's doing it all wrong." Steve fiddles with the angle of the umbrella, and you watch Bucky choose a spot in the water and anchor himself there, letting the water push and pluck at him, lapping at the donut floatie he never took off. 

"Nope." You lay down on your towel, your head just inside the shade the umbrella provides. "He can be out there all by his dumbass lonesome." 

"Sam." 

"You keep saying my name like that like you think it's gonna make me feel charitable to the man all of a sudden, Steve, and yet it hasn't worked yet. Why do you think that is?" 

Steve laughs. "I don't know, because you're a stubborn son of a bitch? It's definitely a charm point, but sometimes, Sam..." 

"Sometimes what? Finish your sentence." 

Steve looms over you. "I'm pretty sure Bucky knows we're sleeping together, you know." 

"And?" You do your best to play off how hard that made your heart thump. It hurts, actually. "What's that got to do with the beach?" 

"I dunno, I've never kissed anyone at the beach." He puckers his lips through a smile. 

"Dumbass." You reach up to swat at his face. "You wanna tell me to be nicer to Bucky but then you wanna third-wheel him not even five minutes into chilling at the beach." It's not fair. You can't talk to him about what you mean to him and vice versa, not out here in the open. It's not like anyone but Bucky is here, and Bucky's not even paying attention, but the sun is, and the ocean is, and that's attention enough for you. 

Steve sighs, and his smile is still here, but it doesn't quite make his eyes. "Alright then. You be an old man and hang out here. I'm gonna go in the water with Buck." 

"Old man!" you sputter, but Steve is already standing up. "That's rich! I don't wanna hear it from you _or_ your little friend!" 

"Whatever, I'm not the one taking a nap on the sand while the kids play in the water." Steve struts off down the beach, leaving you to tell yourself there's nothing wrong with wanting to nap on the sand. Hell, you're not even technically on the sand, you're on a nice dry towel. It's fine where you are, closing your eyes to the smell of salt air and the sound of soft waves. 

You wake up without remembering falling asleep when Steve returns to you. He's sopping wet, and just to be a dick he shakes out his hair like a dog, hitting you with stray droplets. "Steve!" 

"Wake up! You're gonna fry up here. You should get in the water." 

"I'm fine where I am." You turn onto your side to face away from Steve. 

"Come on, Sam," Steve wheedles, but you don't even reply, turning all the way onto your stomach and closing your eyes to look for another nap. 

"I don't fry. I bake, and beautifully," you mutter into your elbow. "Let me cook!" 

"Buck, help me out here!" Steve calls out, and suddenly all your relaxation is gone. You can't hear if Bucky's coming or not over the sounds of the beach, but you know better than to not expect him. 

You're halfway sitting up with your body tensed for flight by the time you realize it's too late. Bucky's hand clamps around your arm, his grip as unmoving as if it belonged to his absent metal arm. You fly through the air with a lot of yelping, and land across Bucky's shoulder in a fireman's carry even as Bucky's already striding across the sand. You can hear Steve laughing; he thinks he's arranged some high grade hijinks here. You beat your fists against Bucky's back, but Market Pantry Super Soldier either doesn't feel it, or isn't bothered enough to do anything about it. 

The first wash of water over your hands is enough to catch your breath in your throat. Bucky keeps going, and your face dips down close to the water's fidgety surface. You try to claw your way backwards up Bucky's back, thrashing like a cat in a toddler's arms, and to your surprise it works. Too well. 

You fall off Bucky's shoulder, slip through the circle of his arm, and into and under the water. 

Salt fills your mouth and nose, the crash of the water both loud and muted against your ears. Your heart wants out of the trap that is your ribs. Physical memories of a hand at the back of your head ghosts across your scalp. The water sounded the same when you were eight, too. 

It feels like you've already succumbed to the ocean when you feel a strong arm looping around your back. You're lifted from the water coughing and spluttering, pressed against a strong chest. Whoever it is hefts you to put their forearm under your butt while you spit up salt water down their back, still half-blind from being underwater. 

"Sam? Sam!" Steve's voice starts off distant, grows closer as he splashes through the surf, and you realize it must be Bucky holding you. "Is he okay?" 

Bucky doesn't answer, just lets Steve take you from him. Steve holds you the same way, with his second arm around your waist, and you feel a third arm thump you across the back. You cough up the last of the water, and Steve wades back up the beach to take you to the umbrella. 

"Sam," Steve's voice says from above you as he lays you on your side, "look at me. Are you alright?" 

"Eventually," you croak, pushing weak thumbs into your eyes to press the rest of the salt out. 

"I didn't know you didn't know how to swim," he says, soft and apologetic as he sits on his towel next to yours. 

"You didn't ask," you say, but you finally look up at him to give him a wry look. If he doesn't know you're kidding he'll spend the rest of his life agonizing over it. "I wouldn't say it's that I don't know how to swim, but more like I don't wanna." 

"I'm lost on the difference, I gotta admit." 

"My dumbass cousin pushed me under when we were kids, thought it would be some funny regular ol' bullying until I almost died and my aunt beat him halfway to skinless for it." 

"Oh." Steve rolls his lower lip between his teeth. "I'm sorry, Sam." 

"Don't be." You wave off his apology. "Grown up me is against putting hands on children, but eight year old me sure did relish hearing that Terrence got his ass whooped after what he did to me." 

"When I was thirteen I had an asthma attack at Rockaway in the water," Steve offers, as nonchalant as if he was telling you about the time he stubbed his toe. 

"And then your stupid ass went on to stay underwater for 70 years," you say with a smirk. "You don't have a survival instinct, do you?" 

"You already know the answer to that," Steve chuckles. Then he sighs, his eyes refocusing as he looks at something in the distance—Bucky. 

You sit up, slow and guided by Steve's hand at your back. Bucky's standing in the water right where you left him, staring out at the horizon. His feet must be buried in the sand by now. 

"Think we should leave him there for a while, or go home?" Steve asks, nodding at Bucky. 

You wanna tell Steve you can leave Bucky there _and_ go home, but you know he won't like that. "I wanna lie in the sun a little while longer," you say, because you still like that aspect of the beach. 

"You're not in the sun. You're under the umbrella." 

"The air is still broken at home." 

"Oh right." 

You go home when the sun starts packing up, because it gets cold out here fast, but that means the house should cool down a bit, too. By then you're feeling strong enough to gather the beach gear along with Steve. 

Bucky spent most of his time in the water, true, but sometimes he came up the beach to lie on the towel Steve brought for him, and then he spent all _that_ time avoiding your eyes. 

Back at the house you flop into your bed, reach under the frame for the book you've been reading, and then leave it face down and open on your stomach because you don't actually feel like reading. You feel like watching TV, but—well. You already know to give up on that. 

Still, a body gets hungry. You tuck your book back under the bed, and head out into the rest of the house to go paw through the fridge. As usual, you brace yourself for the off-limits mess that is the living room, since you have to pass through it to get to the kitchen, and—

It's spotless. 

Or as close to spotless as you've seen it since you moved in. The bedding strewn all over the couch is gone, and you spot a folded corner sticking out from behind the far side of it. The dense books Bucky always has around are stacked neatly on the coffee table. His detritus of a wardrobe has completely vanished, maybe stuffed into a closet to fall on your head later. And most miraculously, his single bowl is gone. 

"I think Bucky's gone," you call out, because you can't think of any other explanation for this. 

But Bucky appears from the hallway, looking almost as uncertain as when Steve asked him to remember who he was. "I thought you might like to sit," he says, gesturing at the couch. 

You look at the couch with a new wariness. "On what?" 

Bucky frowns. "Uh, the couch. You know, the big piece of furniture in the middle of the room that's made for sitting." 

"What traps are laid under there?" The words come tumbling out before you can even vet them, but you wouldn't say you're sorry. 

Bucky twists his fingers together, looking from you to the couch and back again. "Here. Watch." He moves backwards toward the couch, keeping his eyes trained on your face the whole way as he sits down slowly. The couch doesn't snap around him like a bear trap or anything, so you guess it's safe. Not that you really want to sit with Bucky, exactly. 

"Did you want to watch TV?" he asks, holding up the remote. "There's not that many channels." 

"Guess you would know," you say, and you bite your lip a little when Bucky reddens at your words. It's not like you're wrong, but he's trying, right? 

So you put your book at the top of the coffee table stack, and take a careful seat next to Bucky. When he turns the TV on you discover he's right about how few channels there are, but he finds one playing reruns of American shows, and it makes you feel a little less far away from everything you know. 

"I'm sorry," Bucky says, dropping it right into a second of quiet between commercials. 

You turn your whole upper body to look at him, but he isn't looking at you, hands clasped over the space between his knees. You open your mouth to ask him—

"Is this real?" Steve appears at the end of the couch, hair still damp from a shower. "Are you two watching TV together? In peace?" He takes a bigger look around the room. "Is it _clean_ in here?" 

"Yeah, I'm lost, too," you say, the corner of your mouth tugging upward. You want to take his hand and squeeze it for the familiarity. It's how you know how far gone you are. "You wanna pinch me?" 

"Tonight, probably," Steve says with a laugh, and it's all you can do to _not_ knock him down. Sure, Steve's probably right when he reminds you that Bucky's gotta know you're sleeping together. It doesn't mean you want it out in the open. 

Since then you might have to, you know, admit it's not that deep. 

"Steve," you hiss, and nod your head at Bucky behind you. 

"He's fine," Steve mumbles, but at least he doesn't keep talking about it. He clears his throat. "I'm gonna go get some popcorn and sit with you kids." 

With Steve puttering around in the kitchen, you have a chance to look at Bucky again. You don't know what you expected—zoned out, probably, or just focused on the TV. But he has a pinched look to his face that you can't read, and that's when you notice, too, that he's shifted away from you on the couch. 

So much for progress. 

Steve comes to your room that night, leaning in the doorway with the kind of smile that's always melted your heart. You let him kiss your lips, then your neck, before you tell him you're tired. You kiss him back, and he's so understanding when he bids you goodnight and goes back to his own bed. 

It's not like Steve would ever know you want him in every way you can have him if you don't tell him. You know that. 40 is around the corner; you're a grown man. You should tell him you want something real and tangible with him—something you can name. Something that doesn't feel secret. 

Of course, when you wake up the next morning, you decide for the umpteenth time there's no need. What a thing to focus on when you're literally fugitives from a violent government. What a thing to want when you're all three of you wracked with nightmares most nights. You jump in the shower and wash off your feelings. 

Bucky is awake when you enter the living room, and already things are starting to lapse back into their usual state. Until he spots you, and he leaps into action, tidying wherever he goes. He doesn't even greet you. 

Okay. 

You watch him clean from the kitchen as you gussy up your instant oatmeal with brown sugar, raisins and honey; real maple syrup is hard to find down under, and you've heard it's at sky high prices anyway. You've seen him topless before, but you've never had a moment like this where you could really—well, take him in makes it sound sexual, but your father always said you had an artist's eye for detail. Your mama said you were just a nosy child.

Scarring radiates from his mutilated shoulder; that much is easy to focus on. He has little dimples on the back of his hips where love handles are starting to form. Is there a better term for those? His long hair is swept up into a short ponytail with plenty of flyaways, giving you an unimpeded view of his whole back. And look, he's got birthmarks too. One, two, three... 

It's a familiar pattern you trace through the air, counting his birthmarks. Left wing. Right wing. Long tail. 

_Anyone ever tell you they look like a constellation?_ Steve asked. 

Did he know? Did Steve know that Bucky has the eagle on his back, too? 

And Bucky—

Bucky's been so nice to you since he rescued you at the beach. Since he saw your back. 

There's a whole host of emotions you think you ought to have, you're pretty sure. Maybe bitter, or even angry, that it took a random pattern of extra melanin to get Bucky to be nice to you. Paranoid that Steve is trying to pass you off to someone willing to handle all your feelings. Depressed at the thought. Something like that, anyway. 

Instead you start laughing, louder than you mean to as you accidentally squeeze the honey bottle too hard. Honey splats across the counter and your other hand, but you're still laughing, because god! Of course a man who's tried to kill you on two occasions would start crushing on you over some soulmate hokum. Isn't that just your life? 

"What's so funny?" Bucky pauses in his cleaning, which is almost finished, and regards you with suspicion. 

"Oh, everything," you say, holding your honey-slathered hand up. "Life. You know." You stick your pinky in your mouth because it's the goopiest, and it's not until you glance up that you realize what you're doing. You catch Bucky watching your mouth, bottom lip snagged on a canine tooth, and when he catches you catching him he turns pink, coughing as he throws himself back into cleaning. 

Maybe you need this to get over Steve. Or maybe you need it to push you into being honest with him. Either way, this is going to be fun.


End file.
